Splatter
by Swiper. No swiping
Summary: Old nonsense.


First Mobius Bank.  
>Downtown Station Square. Right in the Main Plaza on the corner of Union and Folsom. People are currently forbidden from entering until the hostage situation is resolved. That includes using the ATM machines.<p>

Cops partol the barricades, mostly restraining news reporters and curious bystanders. An older woman wearing a fur coat over a cocktail dress attempts to make a break for it and the cops have to hold her back.

Please ma'am. We're trying to resolve the situation as quickly as we can, they say in practiced tones. Just remain calm.

Situation shmitchuation, she says. The cellulite on her body jiggles in rage. You don't understand. I need to get to an ATM this instant. There is a sale at Macy's, for god's sake. Do you know how important this is?

"Hahaha. Like she even uses a debit card," Nack says. "Nobody has those anymore. It's all credit cards these days. Which, by the way, I never could wrap my head around. Stayed away from them myself. People seem to think it's free money but there aint no such thing as free money. That's called stealing. Speaking of, could you pack faster? And make them rings as non-sequential as you can, okay?"

He waves the gun around a few times like he's conducting a symphony of bank robbery and he needs to bring out more panic in his players. Sweet notes of rings hitting each other as they land in the burlap sacks. The mumble of frenzied counting punctuated by the occasional sob. Music to his ears.

The walls of the safe are mirrored. Chrome polished so that Nack can see his face in each invisible drawer. The tellers he's corralled in the safe exist in every possible reflection of his reality. Effect is a little claustrophobic, he thinks. Nack crosses his eyes in his ski mask for no reason.

Nobody knows who he is, by the way. Only Nack knows who he is. Most of the time.

There's a policeman outside the bank with a megaphone and he turns it on. Above the brief explosion of feedback he shouts Listen, we have the place surrounded. We have you outnumbered. You make this easy for us and you make it easier on yourself.

"Who the fuck taught you how to negotiate?" Nack shouts from inside the safe. "Is that supposed to make me feel better or something?"

"Who is he talking to?" One of the tellers whispers to another.

"Don't know. Just go along with it."

"Can't fucking believe this," Nack sighs. "Special Task Forces are incompetent, who'da thunk. Nah, the whole of Mobotropolis Police is incompetent, of course. The only money is in arresting rich fuckers caught accidentally carrying nickel bags or sixteen-year-olds driving 35 in a 25 mile-per-hour zone. Aint no practicing for bank robberies, right?"

He turns towards the tellers. "How many banks get robbed a year, huh?"

Nobody answers him. Nack doesn't like it when he asks a question and nobody answers him. "You're the fuckers who should know this," he shouts. Points the gun at a teller. "How many banks get robbed a year, eh? Answer me."

The teller is female. It is important to Nack that she is a female. There are quite a few female tellers in here. Actually the majority of them are female. Three to two.

Wait, what was he doing? Was he going to rape her at gunpoint? Maybe. He forgets.

She's crying because she's scared. "I don- I don't know!"

No, no. Don't shit where you eat, Nack. This is a bank robbery and that may be one of the least appropriate times to rape somebody. No DNA must be spilled. Imperative that identity remains anonymous. That's why you're wearing the mask, Nack.

Nack is confused. Tilts his head. The teller has her hands up. Stopped putting rings in the sack. Makes him a little frustrated.

He keeps the gun on her. "What don't you know?"

"How many banks get robbed a year," she sobs.

"Oh. Well how many do you think?"

The fear on her face gives way to confusion. "Uh, not that many?"

"You're probably wrong." Nack uses the gun to scratch at an itch under his mask. "And I mean counting all the times people get caught because of something stupid. Like telling them to deposit all the money in their bank account. Should have clarified that."

What is the most appropriate time to rape somebody? Probably at a Hank Williams III concert. Or after you marry them and it's been a few years. It's almost impossible to get convicted for that. Nack is pretty sure, anyway.

Besides. She's shaped like a pear and her face is ugly and she has a goiter problem and Nack doesn't have any brown bags on him. A burlap sack would do, but all the ones near him are filled with rings. Rings that he needs for his plan.

Right. The plan. Step one almost complete, right?

"We're all out of sacks," reports one of the tellers.

This aint according to plan. "What?"

"Yeah. We're uh, all out of sacks. Can't find any more in here." This teller is male. It's important to note that he's male.

"How is that possible? I calculated this shit fucking precisely. Fucking precisely, I tell you."

"You brought ten sacks holding about a hundred rings each, but expected to walk away with ten million rings?"

"Did I not say fucking precisely? Did you not hear me say that?" Nack points the gun at the teller. He's got a big grin on his face like he's Bob Barker and he wants to know how much the car behind curtain one costs.

The teller looks like he knows how much the car costs. "Yeah. I did."

"And just how precisely is fucking precisely?"

"Uh, it's uh, pretty fucking precise?"

"Yes. Yes! You get it. You understand now. We'll just have to make do here. Improvise. Like the boy scouts. Always be prepared or some shit. I wasn't a boy scout," Nack turns to the rest of the tellers. "Ladies," he says. "Always be prepared. How many of you are wearing clean stockings? Raise your hands."

All three of them raise their hands. None of them are sure why he's asking.

"They must be clean. Clean like they just came from the package. I'll have to inspect 'em. Nothing ruins the mood like a set of dirty pantyhose, let me tell you."

He pauses to reflect, literally. Off the walls. "One time I was tending bar and I watched Amy take off her high heels and give Sonic a foot job underneath one of the tables in the bar. And her pantyhose were filthy as sin. Black as sin, too. Like she just stuck 'em in a bag of soil before getting all prettied up for Sonic. Almost made me want to stop watching. But Sonic didn't mind though. the fucker's got a foot fetish, go figger."

Sonic and Amy are both sixteen. They can't go to bars. Sometimes Nack forgets that, though.

And the male teller from before says, "What the fuck?"

"Well we can use 'em, can't we? I'm gonna have to ask you to take off the stockings, ladies."

One of the female tellers says, "Sir, I don't think that's going to work." She's timid. Skinny and soft. Wears glasses. Never worked outside a day in her life. Probably a college kid. Nack glares at her. He hates those college kids. Trying to get ahead in life without doing any work just because they have a piece of paper that means nothing. Makes him sick.

"How do you know, missy?"

"Well our stockings are pretty small, and these rings are pretty big-"

"Ah fuck it. Whoever decided to use rings as currency anyway? They're too big to carry around but that's the only way us honest folk can keep track of our money." Nack kicks one of the sacks over and it hits the ground with a metallic clank. "Listen, missy. I'm gonna need you to take those pantyhose off right away. Gonna need to give 'em a smell test."

One of the male clerks tries to stop himself from laughing but fails. The little missy, she just stares at him like he's crazy.

"Are you serious?"

"Serious as shit!" he roars, pointing the gun at her with a shaking hand. "Now take them off or before I break 'em off!" Nobody's sure what he means by that. Not even Nack.

Quicker than a jackrabbit in Wyoming on a hot day she kicks off her shoes and pulls off her pantyhose. Tosses them to Nack. He stuffs them under the mask with his nose right in the ass of the pantyhose and breathes in deep.

"You been sweating? Nothing's better than a woman who sweats in her stockings. Gets that feminine scent all over it. You know what? I'm a keep this pair. I'm a man of taste after all."

One of the other female tellers says: "What do you want us to do with the rest of the rings?"

"Of course you probably didn't guess it. Yeah, even kids who was raised in the slums can have taste. No I aint ever been to college. You been to college?"

"Uh." The tellers eye each other all nervous. More nervous than they were before, which was pretty nervous.

"Yeah, I can tell. You all look down on me because you went to college and I didn't. Well while your parents were slaving at their offices to scrimp together the money to keep you at school playing Lower Higher Smoke or Fire with your genitals, I had to work to get where I am today. And I didn't get very fucking far at all. The Mobian fucking dream, assholes. You think we're all created equal?"

Nobody answers him. Nack hates it when he asks a question and people don't answer him, as was stated before. "Answer me, you wimps! You think we're all created equal? You believe that shit?"

"Y-yeah. I mean, for the most part," somebody says in a weak voice. Unsure of themselves.

It is not important to note who said it, just Nack's reaction. Frustration. He can't get through to these people. "Well we aint. Not everybody can get to the upper class, otherwise we'd all be upper class dontcha think? If you're lucky you're lucky and if you aint you aint lucky and you're gonna stay that way for the rest of your life. But that doesn't mean we weren't a hardworking family, no sir. You shouldn't think that just cuz I'm robbing a bank, okay? I worked hard to get where I am today."

"Uh."

"We'd work hard but we'd love what we did, so it didn't feel like work at all. Now, you know, my paw serviced motorcycles for most of his life, but sometimes he'd wash windows on the skyscrapers in the big city. And sometimes I'd go along and help him, because he'd need someone to help him piss in the bucket."

"What?"

"So there we were, drinking beer and pissing in the bucket and he'd wipe the windows with the piss. Nothing cleans off pigeon shit like urine. Home remedy. We'd climb in through one of the open windows and I'd watch my dad hit on the secretary. She was kind of chubby but my dad was a chubby chaser."

One of the male tellers fidgets a little, so Nack walks over to where he's kneeling on the floor. "Now this is important. Behind her desk was this beautiful yellow and black painting that looked like somebody ripped up a bunch of wallpaper. And it was real purdy. I didn't find out til much later that it was a Clyfford Still. I mean, probably not an original. Probably a reproduction, but a Still all the same. Now, you know who he is?"

The male teller shakes his head no.

"You look like you do. You look like you studied art in college. You study art?"

"I majored in economics. That's why I have a job at the bank," the teller offers.

"Nah, man. Don't bullshit me. I mean, look at you. You've got the short cut hair and the piercing scars in your ears. More than one on each ear, too. Maybe some dye damage. All smug and superior. You look like you went to art school."

"No. No, man, I didn't go to art school."

Nack hates being wrong. "Well damn, son. All that education and you didn't learn anything important. I'll learn you. A little art history lesson, okay? There was this period in painting called Abstract Expressionism. Abstract because it was formless and surreal and expressionism because it had an emphasis on the emotion in the brushstrokes. You can tell the difference between short and long strokes, strong and weak strokes, right? I'm asking you, am I right?"

The economics major says: "What?"

"Yeah. It's all about the creation of the painting. It's spontaneous. Shows all the thoughts running through the painters head. I mean, have you ever heard of Jackson Pollock?"

The economics major says: "Uh, no?"

"That's a damn shame. That's just a damn shame. You haven't really lived until you've gazed into a Pollock, son. That guy was a genius. He made the whole fucking period. Painted with sticks. Just straight up beat the fucking canvas with paint covered sticks. Dripped paint on it. That's called splatter art."

Then Nack turns around and shoots the economics major right between the eyes. A few people scream. He falls over, hitting the wall. His blood makes an arc in the air.

"See? Like that," Nack traces the air around the blood with his gun. "Can't you see the emotion in the splatter?"

Little Pantyhose Missy from before starts shrieking and bawling. "Oh my god. Brett!"

And Nack spins around on his feet and shoots her through the forehead too. Eyes wide and angry. "Shut up, woman! Men are talking!" he shouts. Nobody says anything. The two girls left are silently crying. The remaining guy looks like he's about to throw up.

"As I was saying," he continues. "Seeing that painting really sparked this long life interest of mine in modern art. And no, you wouldn't expect that from a yokel like me but there you have it. I didn't study it much, no. I don't really know art but I know what I like."

The woman teller who is shaped like a pear is bawling her eyes out. Hands on her face. "Why are you doing this? Why are you doing this?" she keeps asking.

So Nack saunters over to her like he's going to answer, but then says: "Didn't take too long for me to pick a favorite and that was always Pollock. Jackson Pollock really owned that period of art. You can call me pretentious and all but there's a damn reason that guy holds the record for the most expensive painting ever sold."

And now she's lost it. "What the hell are you even talking about?"

"Jamie, don't-"

"the hell am I talking about?" Nack roars. "Jackson Pollock is what I'm talking about! He was a real tortured genius, seeing through all the bullshit that people like you propagate and getting down to the core of the human soul! But you fuckers couldn't take that. Getting him all drunk and letting him drive in downtown New York City. You killed him, all of you! You drove him insane with your bankings and your economics and your credit cards!"

"What the fuck is New York City?" The female teller is shrieking. Nack hates it when women shriek. It's too high-pitched and offensive to men's ears. Histrionic behavior cannot be tolerated. So he calmly lunges for her and grabs her by the hair. Wrestles her to the ground. Shoots her execution style. One bullet through the back of the skull. Blood gushes out all over the floor of the safe, staining some of the burlap sacks. She twitches a little, then stops.

"You need to listen to me," Nack tells the corpse. "I'm really trying to teach you a lesson here and I won't have it fall on deaf ears, no sir."

"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god." The final female teller crawls to one of the cleaner corners of the safe. Sits in the fetal position and rocks forwards and backwards. Gone near-catatonic. Male teller whispers to himself in silent prayer.

"See, now, every time I'd head down to the museum to see the exhibitions there were always these great big Pollocks that I could just stare at for hours. Pollock refreshes, you know? Gives you energy. Recharges you. That's the word I'm looking for. All the color and lines." Nack waves around in the air, showing them all the color and lines. Nobody else sees it but him.

With every step he takes he tracks a little bit of blood around the room. "My brain got to thinking, as it sometimes does. What if I combined the two things that brought me the most happiness in my life, which was sex and modern art. What is life without some happiness in it, you know? Every man deserves a little bit of happiness in their lives, am I right? 'Course the guards didn't take too kindly to me bringing my dates in the gallery. Especially after they were closed for the night. Had to smash their windows in a couple of times til they got the message."

The last male teller runs to Jamie's corpse. Tries to flip her over for some reason. Maybe to see if she's still alive? No dice. Nothing in her eyes except blank fear. He starts crying finally.

Nack takes notice and walks over to him. "I got penis problems. Well hell, who doesn't?"

And the male teller, with tears still running down his face, looks like somebody reached down into his head and cracked his brain open like an egg.

But Nack doesn't let that bother him. "I have great erections. Solid fucking erections. Never had a complaint on that end, no sir. But see, once I get it in there and I start going, I just kinda keep going til it's over. Can't really control myself. It's selfish, I know. That's what my sister always says. Accuses me of being selfish whenever we fuck and I blow my load too early."

Nack doesn't have a sister. Not in this continuity. But he forgets sometimes.

Bewilderment on the clerk's face gives way to disgust. "What?"

"Yeah, my sister. You know she's a real purdy gal. You ever seen her?"

"No?"

"Well she's a real purdy gal. Looks just like me. 'Course that's where the attraction is. Our fucking is mostly out of narcissism, I know, I know. Anyway. What do you do to keep yourself from busting too soon?"

The male teller just starts sobbing. "I d-don't know what you're talking about," sob, sob sob. "Why are you asking me this?"

Nack is unfazed. Again. "Well see, I want to buy a Pollock. And a new couch. And I was thinking to hang the Pollock over my new couch so that way when I fuck my sister I can look at it and try to focus on not blowing my load too soon. Haven't you been following anything I've been saying?"

No response. Nothing but sobs.

He sighs. "Of course you haven't." Pulls out his gun and fires. The male teller falls over on Jamie, adding another splatter to the canvas that is the floor.

"Oh god! Oh god, please-"

The voice is the final female teller. He notices her for the first time just now, in the corner. She's just rocking back and forth, crying: "No! Please no! Stay away from me!"

He smiles. "Kids these days! You need to listen to me or else you aren't going to learn! Now where was I."

Nack turns on his heels and slowly stumbles towards her. Gets up all close to her and stops, smiling at her. A halo of saliva around his mouth. And she can see his bloodshot eyes and she can see through them, looks through them to some remote part of his brain where she can see the empty pill bottle next to the sink in his apartment. And she can see the yellow-green pills dissolving to sludge in the drain. And she can feel the drool falling on her chest, but she's afraid to look away from his eyes, and he gets up real real close to her and then he sez:

"You know who else is pretty good? De Kooning. I like that guy. Could probably keep up a pretty good hard-on looking at a De Kooning. But never at a Basquiat. That fucker was crazy."


End file.
